


Rewriting History

by animalker



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: (in the form of blood magic), F/F, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:45:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4241193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/animalker/pseuds/animalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewriting History

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from [Miri](http://theladyinquisitors.tumblr.com/), "rewriting history". Read on tumblr [here!](http://inquisiitor.tumblr.com/post/122003543429/hawke-merrill-rewriting-history)

**I.**

This is how it goes.

You are seven years old with your parents watching you leave with another clan, a woman’s hand over your shoulder. Your parents have chosen not to accompany you to your new clan, and you don’t know why. You’re old enough to know crying would be bad because you are fulfilling a vital duty but young enough to do it anyway. The base of the whittled figurine your mother gave you digs sharp into your palm, hard enough to hurt.

You never asked for this- you never wanted this- _you never_ -

The Keeper is very nice and very kind but you only want your mother. You don’t get her, but you get a woman who will watch you do terrible things and then save you when you didn’t need to be saved. You get a friend in a quiet boy with grey eyes and a different surname to everyone else too. He has a daring streak already tempered by duty and cleverness. You’ll never love him the way the stories say love is, but he’ll be an ex something. He’ll face down an archdemon and won’t die for it, but he’ll never be the same.

You are seven, and you’ll never be the same either. What you want, instead of this clan with aravals decorated in red and white instead of blue and silver, is your mother, your father, and the liars you loved, who didn’t love you enough to want to stay with you. 

 

**II.**

You are twenty years old, standing in front of your mirror for the first time, and watching as it gets smashed to pieces in the name of the greater good. Mahariel is a stumbling wreck, and he has had two coughing fits in the short time you have been with him. The ruins are heavy over your head; you are unused to underground stone mazes. The skeletons lay numerous on the ground, and the darkspawn hiss and howl as they die. It is an old place, a sad place, and the mirror most of all, corrupted and twisted and forgotten, bleeding and broken.

Mahariel leaves, Tamlen is dead and nothing matters anymore except the books you know backwards, the stories you listen to around the fire. You sometimes think you would’ve liked to be a storyteller instead of a Keeper, getting old and grey back with the Alerion clan with parents you barely remember. You’re not sure if you look like your mother, your father, neither, or both.

You don’t know anything and nor do the Dalish, because your history and your family was taken from you much the same way as the elves of long ago. One of those you can reclaim. The girl you are would want it- the girl you used to be would not, but she was young and stupid and wanted things she couldn’t have. You ignore the Keeper when she tells you to stop, because this is something that matters now, and something that _will_ matter in hundreds of years time to elves you will never know. That is what you want, and you have come too far to flinch in the face of forbidden magic. The demon is kind to you. Kind like you knew it would be, and it offers things you want but don’t need. The blood magic comes easily to you- you are a natural, the demon croons, as if it believes you are fool enough to be fattened for the feast.

This will be your legacy and you will see it through, even when your cuts hurt and your blood seeps through the cracks and creases in your palm.

 

**III.**

You are twenty one years old, and you meet a beautiful girl. She has wavy red hair and coal eyes that don’t brighten in the sunlight. She is tall, broad, and unkind, and she doesn’t ever smile when she sees you. She doesn’t look at you with disgust despite the smell of magic lingering heavy and suffocating, the dark and drying blood smeared on your fingertips, and she is different from the clan who was meant to love you all your life because of it.

You do not love her at first sight, nor her you, but you learn her name is Hawke. You make a stupid comment about a bird and she doesn’t smile, but she doesn’t laugh at you either. You learn she likes a good fight with the bad guys, that she loves her sister and loved her brother, and that she doesn’t lie, especially to people who matter. You don’t matter to her yet, but you will.

You leave your clan behind, and you feel every single one of their eyes on your back. They took you in and you tried to fill the shoes of a dead man but you were doomed to fail from the start. You’ll not fail in this, though. Finding history and uncovering the truth- this you were taught to do from the moment your magic sparked within. You will preserve and protect your people because nothing means more than this, not the blood magic, not the mirror, and not you.

 

**IV.**

You are twenty two with a mirror that doesn’t work and friends who shouldn’t and often don’t fit together. After the expedition, you expected Isabela and Anders to drift away; Fenris and Varric to leave and Aveline to stay. You expect to be forgotten in the Alienage because you make stupid comments, curl your toes when you’re nervous, and get lost too often for it to be charming. You don’t expect all of them to stay, and you don’t expect Hawke to go out of her way to spend time with you.

She smiles when she sees you now, except now she brings you elfroot salve for your wounds, and sometimes she brings flowers, which you put in vases and try not to stare at them too often. She is still beautiful, except now you matter to her. She is still tall; she still isn’t nice; she still deserves better than you. Yet you love her like you’ve never loved anyone, and long for things that will never be. The mirror by your bed doesn’t show you anything you don’t know. It is all cracked glass and fragmants pieced carefully together by someone who doesn’t know what to do, much like yourself and the way you built yourself back after losing Mahariel, Tamlen, the clan, the keeper, and the parents you do not remember.

When you press a hand to the glass it is warm, not cold, but nothing ever comes of it. Hawke is cold, but she is warm too, and nothing ever comes of that either.

 

**V.**

You are twenty three years old, your hair is longer than it used to be, Pol is dead, the mirror is still cold, dead, and broken, and you still love Hawke. She has never lied to you and she has never left you. You know it isn’t only that, but it helps on the nights where you are so lonely it burns at the back of your throat and stings your eyes.

There are less of those, these days, because you have friends that are something like family.

Hawke doesn’t kiss like she fights; she kisses soft and slow and gentle, and acts like she’s the lucky one. You know she isn’t, because people die around while you try to do the right thing. When the mirror is still dead and dark, its harder to ignore the demons in your dreams and the looming fear of failure heavy on your shoulders. Without the mirror and piecing together the past, you’re just a blood mage in the Alienage. You’ll have nothing except Hawke if you fail, and as much as you love her, that is not enough.

 

**VI.**

This is how you want it to go.

The demon tells you what you need to know, and the mirror is fixed. You find some artifact or book or knowledge that makes these years of staring at dark glass worth every second. Your clan apologises and the knowledge you found is spread throughout the Dalish clans. It changes things. On some daydreams, the gods return and walk among the People- in others, the Dalish are given land, for real and proper, and elves from everywhere travel to reach it.

That does not happen, because you are tired and stupid and want things you can’t have. For all your power, you can’t save the ones you love. Instead what happens is your entire clan dies by Hawke’s hand because they wanted to kill you, and she didn’t let them. You are twenty six and you are one of two survivors, neither of you hold the Sabrae name.

Hawke kisses your hands that night, over the scars, and tells you she loves you, and that she will always love you, no matter what comes. You still don’t deserve her, especially now with the corpses are piled so high you can’t see past them anymore. You used to see the big picture, but now nothing is certain. You are too cowardly and too in love to ever leave her, despite all you have done, because Hawke is better than Kirkwall, the city she is trying to save, and better than you, who she saved at a terrible price.

You know Hawke would do it a hundred times over, but it doesn’t make it easier.

 

**VII.**

You stand in the ash of rubble and blood, and the knight-commander kneels in front of you, splintered with red bleeding through the cracks in her petrified skin. Kirkwall has cracked down the middle, the streets have run with blood, and you are unbearably tired at the thought of more death.

You would do a lot of things differently, if given the chance.

Hawke is not one of them.


End file.
